Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted The Importance of Friends and Corporate Finance Practices Around the World(La Trobe University, 2024-12) Grami, Madaniah; Al Mamun, Muhammad; Balachandran, Balasingham; Karuna, Christo; Baghdadi, GhasanThis dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on the theoretical framework of the New Institutional Economics proposed by Williamson (2000). It investigates the influence of the importance of friends (FRI) on the financial decisions and outcomes of listed firms from around the world. The thesis is structured into six chapters: an introduction, a presentation of the concept of the importance of friends, three empirical chapters, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter builds on the existing literature on friendship and it explores the following: (a) the background, (b) the motivation supported by theoretical arguments and anecdotal evidence linking FRI with corporate finance decisions, (c) summaries of the three empirical chapters, and (d) contribution to the literature on this subject. The second chapter explains the conceptual understanding of the importance of friends. The first empirical chapter (Chapter 3) explores how FRI, as a measure of social connections, shapes firms’ relationships with their suppliers. Specifically, it examines the role of FRI on firms’ trade credit policy (TC) and shows that higher FRI increases firms’ usage of TC. Extending the potential implication of FRI on the managerial agency behavior of firms, the second empirical chapter (Chapter 4) investigates the influence of FRI on firms’ dividend policy. Empirical results show that higher FRI increases the dividend decision-to-pay and payout ratio; in fact, it mitigates the agency implications of dividend policy. The third empirical chapter (Chapter 5) extends the potential caring argument of FRI to firms’ communities by examining its influence on businesses’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. The results show that higher FRI promotes firms’ ESG performance. Collectively, these findings offer a new perspective on understanding corporate decisions related to financing, distribution, and stakeholder commitments. The findings from this thesis have significant implications for relevant stakeholders in making investment decisions, financing choices, and other related decisions.38 0Item Restricted The Use of Proxies in Designing for and with Autistic Children: Supporting Friendship as a Case Study(2022-09-11) Alabdullatif, Aljawharah; Pain, HelenParticipatory Design (PD) is an approach for designing new technologies which involves end users in the design process. It is generally accepted that involving users in the design process gives them a sense of ownership over the final product which enhances its usability and acceptance by the target population. Employing a PD approach can introduce multiple challenges especially when working with autistic children. Many approaches for involving autistic children and children with special needs were developed to address these challenges. However, these frameworks introduce their own limitations as well. There is an ethical dilemma to consider in the involvement of autistic children in the design process. Although we established the ethical benefit of involving children, we did not address the ethical issues that will result from involving them in these research projects. Among other issues, the nature of design workshops we as a community currently run require working with unfamiliar researchers and communicating with them while social and communication differences are one of the main diagnostic criteria for autism. When designing for autistic children and other vulnerable populations an alternative (or most often an additional) approach is designing with proxies. Proxies for the child can be one of several groups of other stakeholders, such as: teachers, parents and siblings. Each of these groups may inform the design process, from their particular perspective, and as proxies for the target group of autistic children. Decisions need to be made about what stages in the design process are suited to their participation, and the role they play in each case. For this reason, we explore the role of teachers, parents, autistic adults and neurotypical children as proxies in the design process.15 0